Shops at Worthington Place

Apartments proposed for west, north parking lots

Apartment buildings have been proposed for the parking lots on the west and north sides of the Shops at Worthington Place.

The proposal will receive its first review by the Municipal Planning Commission and the Architectural Review Board on Thursday, Oct. 25. The joint meeting begins at 7:30 p.m. at the Worthington Municipal Building.

The proposal shows a four-story apartment building over a parking garage on the west side of the mall, with two rows of head-in parking between the two buildings.

Two buildings with three-story, two-bedroom town homes are proposed for north of the mall, facing Old Wilson Bridge Road.

Rear entrances and one-car garages would face Worthington Place.

The north-west drive through the mall would line up with the separation between the two townhome buildings.

The developer is listed as Crawford Hoying Development Partners, a Dublin-based company with 24 apartment complexes in central Ohio.

Locally, those include Worthington Meadows and Worthington Woods.

The four-story building would be U-shaped, with an amenity deck on top of the garage. The deck might include a pool, a garden space and a terrace, according to a city planning department memo.

The building would have 70 one-bedroom and efficiency apartments and 51 two-bedroom apartments.

Each of the three-story units would include a one-car garage and space for storage or an office on the ground level; living and dining rooms and a half bath on the second floor; and two bedrooms and baths on the third floor. The typical unit size would be about 1,200 square feet.

The proposal for multifamily housing at this site is consistent with the Wilson Bridge corridor study, which calls for a mix of housing and office/ commercial at the site.

A memo from the city planning department to the MPC/ARB calls the development "appropriate" but recommends a traffic analysis before the project is approved.

Besides architectural approval, the proposal requires a subdivision of the parcel, an amendment to the development plan and a conditional-use permit to allow residential uses in a C-2 zoning district.